


A Win-Win Situation

by ellispark



Series: Codas [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 13x23 Coda, M/M, Michael!Dean, Post-Episode: s13e23 Let the Good Times Roll, Post-Season/Series 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 03:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14740904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellispark/pseuds/ellispark
Summary: Michael finds he cannot control Dean Winchester. But maybe Castiel can.





	A Win-Win Situation

The first time his vessel lays eyes on the abomination this world knows as Castiel, he revolts.

Michael thought he’d put him to sleep, eased him into a lovely dream where he and his brother and the so-called angel sat in the sand on some beach, drinking alcoholic beverages and burning their weak human skin in the sun.

But when this Castiel says, “Dean, please,” through bloodied teeth, the vessel’s former occupant shoves against Michael with all his might. For a moment, less than a full second in human time, Michael can no longer see through the vessel’s eyes. He’s been pushed back — he, an archangel, the most powerful being in the universe.

He manages to regain control, flying away to regroup before Dean can say the words needed to expel him. He's learned his lesson — Dean Winchester’s former body must not be allowed anywhere near his ex-associates.

It will prove a difficult task to accomplish.

They summon him, lighting a ring of holy fire he barely manages to douse before Dean Winchester can feel his own toes. They order the witch to bind him, and when he attempts to smite her, Dean Winchester holds back his hand. They pray to him incessantly, but the prayers are directed _to_ Dean, _through_ him, as if the commander of Heaven’s armies is nothing more than a messenger boy to them.

And every time, Dean awakens. He rails against the prison of Michael’s making, scrambles for every scrap of control, every neuron and every nerve he can alight, trying to win back his body one cell, one bone, one muscle at a time.

Michael is finding this vessel, this universe to be more trouble than it’s worth. But perhaps in another world Dean Winchester can be broken.

 

///

 

Michael burns through seven witches and nineteen universes before he finds the one he’s looking for, the ideal setting to bring Dean Winchester to his knees.

It’s a world very much like Dean’s own — the apocalypse was averted years ago by the Winchester brothers, this universe’s Lucifer and Michael are still in the cage, the sun still hangs in the sky, humanity still runs amok. But unlike in Dean’s world, this world’s Winchesters are dead.

Castiel, however, lives on. Alone. Abandoned. Broken.

It is an ingenious plan, Michael thinks as he stands outside another bunker in another Kansas. Dean will get to see his lover in the flesh, but it won’t be the version worth battling an archangel for. It is, as the humans say, a win-win situation.

 

///

 

Dean is brought abruptly to the surface, facing the bunker door. It's unlike every other time he’s wrestled even a finger twitch away from Michael. This time, instead of crawling toward consciousness on his hands and knees, elbowing and kicking Michael’s grace away, he's catapulted toward it.

He’s suspicious. Wary.

“Get out,” he says to Michael, managing to string the words together without Michael putting him back under for the first time. “I cast you out!”

He waits. Every time he’s started to say those magic words, Michael has shoved him down, down deep, made him sleep. Made him forget. But he remembers now, and nothing’s happening.

Hope in Dean’s line of work, in Dean’s _life_ , is precarious. Deadly. But he dares to hope anyway. Sam and Cas and Jack must have figured out the way to crack open an archangel, the way to pull Dean back.

He reaches for the door and finds it unlocked. Dean steps inside, past the first layer of the invisible angelic warding he and Sam laid down after Lucifer broke out.

Nothing — no force field, no weird tingling feelings in inappropriate places. He’s angel free and home free.

Dean throws his head back and laughs, delighted. “Sam! What the fuck did you do?!”

The words echo around the stone walls as Dean runs down the staircase two steps at a time, leaping over the railing and into the war room. He skids to a halt when he sees the map table, covered in a layer of dust so thick he can’t make out the countries beneath it.

“Sam?” he calls again, softer, dragging a finger through the grime. The main lights are out, and the emergency lighting casts the room in an ominous red glow. It’s empty of any signs of life — no pizza boxes stacked in the trash can in the corner, no beer cans or books on the table. No shoes lined up by the staircase, no keys hanging on the hook by the hallway. No Sam, no Cas, no Jack.

Dean fingers itch as if they’re trying to find the trigger on a gun as he slowly crosses the room to the library, sticking close to the wall. Something is very wrong here, and he’s unarmed and on edge in his own damn home.

He turns on the lamp on the far table, illuminating the floating dust motes and a shoddy, bloodied trench coat tossed carelessly over the closest chair. His throat constricts.

“Cas?!” Forgetting the general air of danger, Dean yells at the top of his lungs, “CAS! SAM!”

A door in the hall creaks. Dean pauses with his fingertips on the lapel of the trench coat, as if that relic holds enough weight to keep him standing when a shaky, confused voice calls out, “Dean?”

He runs toward the voice, a voice that has signified salvation and safety and _home_ for almost a decade now, and he runs right into Cas. Dean sweeps him up in his arms wordlessly, grasping Cas to his chest and twining his fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, mouth wet against Cas's throat as he says, “Fuck, _fuck_ , I thought something happened to you...”

Cas doesn’t move to hold him in return, naturally, because after all these years he still hasn’t learned the proper reflex for surprise hugs. Dean pulls back enough to look at Cas’s face in the light from the library, to drink him in. He’s rocking the Purgatory grunge look again — a full beard, ratty pajamas and a concerned expression. Dean rubs his finger against the whiskers, lingering this time, holding on to Cas with his other arm.

“Y’know,” he says, attempting to lighten the reunion mood, “we can probably come up with a good use for your beard of mourning.”

Cas stares, unblinking, lips parted. Dean doesn’t think, he just — smacks one on him, careless, reckless. Done with the bullshit that’s held him back so many times before. He surges into the kiss with such unbridled enthusiasm he doesn’t notice Cas’s stillness at first, the way his lips fail to yield to Dean’s. When it hits him he’s kissing a brick wall, he eases up, leaning back slightly. Cas’s eyes are on his, blank.

Then he knocks Dean on his ass with a solid blow to the chest.

Dean sprawls out on the tile, pressing a hand to his sternum, gasping. “What the fuck!”

“Get out!” Cas yells, the first show of emotion Dean’s seen from him. “Imposter!”

"No, Cas, it’s me —”

“Michael!” Cas’s voice grows louder, and Dean doesn’t think he’s ever heard it reach that high of an octave. “Get out, Michael!”

“Cas —” His protest drowns on his tongue as the grace in his chest unfurls, awake again and taking control. Dean rails against it, the impossibility of it — he cast Michael out, Michael cannot be here, this cannot be happening....

“Castiel,” Michael says, shoving Dean’s presence to the side, where he can hear but not speak. “This is a gift.”

Cas takes a step backward, hands shaking.

“You’re in the cage,” he whispers. “You cannot be here.”

Dean screams in frustration, grasping for a modicum of control. Michael refuses to yield.

“In your universe, yes,” he says. “But I am not of this universe. I come from a place where Dean said ‘yes,’ and I intend to return there after he’s had his fill of you.”

_Get out!_

Cas shakes his head. Dean’s never seen him look so afraid.

“Why? Why are you doing this?”

“You miss him, don’t you?” Michael walks confidently toward Castiel, his vacant power returning, crackling through Dean’s veins, causing the lights in the hall to flicker. “Your Dean, dead for years. Leaving you here to rot. He misses his Castiel, too. You can be together again, in this place, however briefly.”

_Get out! Get away from him, get out!_

“You shouldn’t be here.” Cas stumbles in his haste to back away from Michael’s advance, catching himself with the tips of his fingers before he hits the floor. “Leave!”

Dean feels Michael pull the muscles surrounding his mouth into a grimace.

“Tell that to Dean.”

This time when Dean surfaces, it’s slow. It's like coming up out of the water after nearly drowning, gasping for air, scrambling for something to hold him afloat. Michael brushes against him on his way up, slithering away deep into his mind, whispering _new universe, new rules, Dean_.

Dean can’t expel Michael here.

He falls to his hands and knees as Michael completes his retreat, head to the tile, tears in his eyes, hope drowning. He’s not in control. He is not free. This is not his Cas, his home or his world.

As the first heaving sob wracks his body, a large, trembling hand sets itself on his shoulder blade, rubbing gently. Dean falls apart, face to the floor, while another Castiel tries to hold him up.

 

///

 

Every time Michael senses Dean waking from his dream prison, he opens the rift to the world with the lonely Castiel.

Dean cries through the first seven visits, lost and wounded and desperate to go home. This Dean Winchester bewilders the other Castiel. He’s lived alone, buried underground in a tomb of a home for years as his grace rotted away. Castiel is unused to companionship, unsure how to react to a Dean who doesn’t hide his feelings. His rudimentary attempts at comfort provide some entertainment to Michael — the awkward back pats, the ‘there, there’s.

On the eighth visit, Castiel has shaved and put on the wretched trench coat. The bunker has been dusted. There’s a beer on the kitchen counter. Castiel shifts his weight from foot to foot as Dean appears in front of him, nervous. Human.

“I expected you,” he says with some hesitance.

Dean, overwhelmed, hugs him. Michael feels the warmth of it, even buried as he is.

It becomes habit — the two sit and drink in silence, mourning all they’ve lost, then Michael shuts Dean down and takes him away again.

The questions begin around the 21st trip. Castiel asks, “Why did you say yes?” and Dean tells him. He tells him about Jack, Sam, Lucifer. Mary, Bobby, Charlie. He tells Castiel about the other version of himself, the man he loves. This Castiel listens, a sad smile on his face.

They talk during every visit after that, discussing everything from movies to the deaths they’ve witnessed. Michael allows them to speak freely, relishes the relationship building between the two. Though he can’t read Castiel’s thoughts when he’s not in control of Dean, he feels everything Dean feels — the easy affection, the amusement. The love.

Dean enjoys coaxing this Castiel out of his grief, giving him something to look forward to. He’s happy when he’s here, drinking beer with his best friend, their shoulders touching as they watch movies Michael ignores.

Every time they touch Michael feels it in his grace. It worries him to an extent, but not enough to end his trips to this universe. After all, a content Dean is easier to silence, easier to push down. Even the prayers of his Castiel no longer cause him to stir.

Michael is winning.

 

///

 

Lucifer once told Michael his biggest weakness is his tendency to underestimate everyone. Lucifer was right. Michael underestimated him, and he wreaked havoc from inside the cage for centuries.

But Lucifer was an archangel. Castiel is a seraph with only a glimmer of grace and a love for Dean Winchester.

Michael doesn’t register the bleed-through until he’s overwhelmed by it.

During their 47th visit, Dean kisses Castiel on the cheek, and Michael is floored by the burst of affection emanating from his vessel. For a moment, Michael feels as though he, too, cares for this Castiel and wants him to be happy.

The moment resides, and Michael stomps down on Dean viciously, flying far away.

 

///

 

He flies to the bunker, his vessel’s bunker, with an intent to destory the occupants once and for all.

Dean, satisfied between his beach dreams and his stolen moments with the other Castiel, hasn’t attempted to wake in this world in weeks. If there was ever a time to get rid of Sam Winchester and heaven’s most troublesome angel, it’s now.

Michael enters the bunker with ease, the angel warding long faded. He teleports to the kitchen, where Castiel sits alone at the table. He glances up, startled, and stands so fast he knocks his chair down.

“Dean,” he says, like a fool. Michael holds up one hand, fingers poised to snap.

Yet —

He stops, inexplicably. Dean is not awake, and yet he — He _feels_ something, stirring in his rib cage, pounding in his chest. Sadness, fondness, _love_. The feelings he trained Dean to focus on the other Castiel rising as his vessel stands before the real thing.

An absurd thought occurs to him as he holds his fingers together. _You don’t want to hurt Cas_.

“Dean,” Cas repeats, pleading, and a tidal wave of longing slams Michael down, down, down.

“Get out,” says his vessel’s voice, and Michael's grace pours out of him like a flood.

 

///

 

He returns to that dust-covered bunker in Kansas in another vessel from another world.

Castiel stands before him, downtrodden and resigned. Michael knows it’s been months since he last brought Dean here, and Castiel’s beard is back, his shoulders set in a permanent slump.

“Where is Dean,” he says, not bothering to make it a question, assuming he knows the answer.

“Where he belongs,” Michael says. “With you.”

Castiel raises his head, and Michael sees it in his eyes. He sees the same feeling Dean felt when he first entered this world, the feeling Dean felt when he heard his Cas say his name — hope.

“I have other worlds,” Michael says, a touch defensively, and Castiel simply nods, letting Michael pretend he hasn’t been profoundly altered by the love growing within a mere human.

“Why are you here, then?” Castiel asks, and it’s almost refreshing to see him unafraid, a glint in his eye.

“I had unfinished business.” Michael pointedly looks skyward. “I thought you might want to go home.”

With a snap of his fingers, Castiel is in heaven, reunited with Sam and Dean Winchester. Michael nods to himself, satisfied, then mentally checks his list of other known universes to see how many more trips he must make.

 

///

 

Angels know devotion. Michael has known it well himself, loving an absent father for millennia. It’s a powerful emotion, powerful enough to fell an archangel, and Michael recognizes that now. He is nothing if not a strategist. He knows he cannot control any universe in which Dean Winchester is separated from Castiel. One stubborn human would move heaven, earth, and an archangel to reach one rebellious little seraph. It’s best to tie up loose ends, make sure all parties are satisfied, and take out the biggest threats, leaving room for Michael to slither in and conquer while his enemies are otherwise occupied. Pairing the two of them across the multi-verse is a win-win situation.

At least that’s what Michael tells himself.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I wanted an AU!Cas who isn't a Nazi. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
